Week Of: July 18, 2010
Title: The Meaning of Being a Baptist
Series: Doctrine of the Church - Part 6
Scripture: Acts 16: 25-30
1. If you were asked “Why are you a Baptist?” how many of you would know what to say? Your response might be: “I guess the reason I am a Baptist is I was born into a Baptist home”; or “I just liked this church, that’s the reason I am here.”
2. Well, what do you really know about being a Baptist or, for that matter, a Southern Baptist? Bear with me this morning and let me give you a little information about people who call themselves Baptist.
3. No one knows for sure, but the Baptist World Alliance estimates that Baptist number over 100 million people with over 211 denominations and groups worldwide.
4. At one time, an ABC News telephone poll estimated that 15 percent of Americans identify themselves as Baptists. Baptists are the largest Protestant group of believers in the world and Southern Baptists are the largest single non-Roman Catholic denomination in the world.
5. But where do we come from and what do we believe that sets us apart from other Christian denominations?
6. Well first of all, let me tell you that we are not direct ecclesiastical (church) descendants of John the Baptist. John the Baptist practiced immersion as a symbol of repentance of sins as we do but, as far as I know, the similarity stops there.
7. We are not followers of John the Baptist; we are followers of Jesus Christ. Yet, baptism is a clue to our origin…because we do believe that baptism is very important in following Christ, and we do believe in “being born again baptism” instead of being baptized as infants into the church.
8. You see as far as we know from around the second or third century to the 16th century, the Christian Church only practiced infant baptism. And it is my opinion they did with very little scriptural evidence. In fact, our scripture this morning is given as the most Biblical reason for the practice of infant baptism.
9. Paul and Silas were in prison in Philippi praising God and singing hymns when a sudden earthquake shook the doors off the prison cells. The jailer woke up and thought all of his prisoners escaped and was about to kill himself, when Paul called out, “We are all here!” The jailer quickly got to the point and asked Paul, “Sir, what must I do to be saved?”
10. Paul and Silas replied: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.” Sure enough, Paul and Silas did go home with the jailer, and he and his entire household was baptized.
11. The Christian church, for over one thousand years, assumed that “the family” in this scripture included infants. Even after the Protestant Reformation, many of the newly formed Protestant groups like the Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anglicans practiced infant baptism. In fact, today many denominations believe in and practice infant baptism.
12. However, in 16th century Europe there was a “radical group of believers” who dared challenge the religious establishment’s belief on infant baptism. They were called the “Anabaptists—which means “re-baptizers.” They believed that to be a Christian you needed to be “born again” and have “believers’ baptism,” not infant baptism.
13. They were warned if they baptized folks that had been baptized as infants they would suffer the consequences. Well, they did, and they did suffer, because many were imprisoned and even burned at the stake. Anabaptists were mostly located on the European Continent.
14. In England, under the direction of Henry the VIII, the Church of England separated from the Roman Catholic Church in 1534. Henry the VIII wanted to divorce his Queen Catherine for his second to-be wife Anne Boleyn. He did so by declaring himself to be the “Sovereign ruler on earth of the church of England” and had his marriage with Catherine dissolved. He separated himself and the Church of England from the Pope by becoming the head of the Church of England. Yet despite all of this he never changed his Roman Catholic beliefs. He died in 1547.
15. Several decades after his death, there came another group of believers who wanted to further purify the Church of England of its Roman Catholic beliefs. They were called Puritans.
16. But purify the Anglican church from what? We cannot get into all that, but can you imagine this? Elizabeth I (Henry VIII’s daughter), once she became Queen, declared that everyone in England had to attend an Anglican Church on Sunday or suffer punishment. In other words, it was a crime not to go to church. Yes! J A preachers dream…and a lay person’s nightmare.
17. Do you know why I believe the puritans were our Baptist ancestors? They resented their taxes going to support things they didn’t believe in. J Such as tax money going to pay the Anglican priest’s salary for a church that didn’t support their beliefs. They did not believe in a church state and did not want their taxes supporting such a religious organization. Baptist’s have historically believed in the separation of church and state.
18. In fact, one of the reasons that our Baptist forefathers left England to come to America is that they wanted to get away from the state of England interfering with their religious beliefs and practices. So they would be rolling over in their graves if they knew that there were Baptists who wanted or were allowing their government to be more involved in religious matters.